Viral Marketing Campaign
campaign that involves the viral loop for distributing content, launching new products, and generating product-related WOM
Traditional vs Social Campaign
Traditional:
-Company gives out marketing info/message to the masses
Social:
-company gives out marketing info/message to seeds and encourage them to share this with the masses
-allows the sharing of information more efficiently/effectively
Seeding
process whereby a firm sends product samples to a selected group of consumers (seeds) and asks them to generate WOM about that product and share with other consumers
Seeds
a selected group of consumers
Masses
: the "other customers" with whom product information is shared in the seeding process
Before VMC launch:
1. Identify a small set of customers to act as "seeds"
2. Reach out to seeds and encourage them to test out the new product or service
3. Solicit feedback from seeds and incorporate it
During VMC Launch
1. Develop a network-externality-based incentive
2. Treat new customers as seeds
Post VMC Launch:
1. Repeat the above steps as more new customers enter
2. Perform post-launch analysis
Spillover from VMCs
An important property of social media communications is that conversations do not necessarily stay on topic of the focal product
Incentivizing Seeds
Use marketing interventions to "nudge" seeds
Incentive category types:
-Extrinsic
- Intrinsic
Extrinsic
-Material/monetary rewards in exchange for seeds performing a certain set of agreed-upon actions
-Typically associated with creating and sharing productrelated content
Intrinsic
-Designed to trigger a seed's intrinsic motivations
-Perform tasks to facilitate information flow over their social media connects
-Tasks should be designed to tap into seeds' needs and desires
How to select seeds?
- Degree
- Betweenness
- PageRank
- Tie Strength
Other factors to consider when selecting seeds
- Consumer loyalty
- Activity
- Influence
- Fit
- Diversification
- Customer lifetime value
- Cost
Additional Consumer Characteristics
- product category expert
- passionate about the product
- being easy to relate to
Include both ___________ and ____________ in a group of seed customers
social hubs;
pumps
Hubs
higher-connectivity nodes in networks
Pumps
people who are highly socially active (they transmit information frequently)
Stephen and Bart Hub vs Pump
Low Connectivity/High Activity = Pump
High Connectivity/High Activity = Pump + Hub
High Connectivity/Low Activity= Hub
We can categorize DIFFERENT TYPES of social interactions along what two dimensions?
1. IMPACT ON PARTICIPANTS (weak vs. strong)
2. BARRIERS TO ACTIVATION(low vs. high)
Impact on participants
refers to the likelihood that the social interaction, if it takes place, will have a strong influence on the attitudes and/or behaviors of the participants in the interaction
Barriers to activation
refer to the ease or difficulty of the social tie being activated in order for the social interaction to occur
Network Centrality Measures
-Hinz paper 2011
-Looked at entry page vs video page over time
-3 seeding strategies: high degree, low degree, random
-High degree and betweenness worked best in cumulating number of unique visits
-->
TELLS US WE NEED TO BE SMART ABOUT SELECTING SEEDS
Should we select loyal consumers?
- David Godes and Dina Mayzlin. 2009. "Firm-Created Word-ofMouth Communication: Evidence from a Field Test". Marketing Science 28(4), pp. 721-739.
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For products with low initial awareness, less loyal customers can have a larger impact on spreading WOM an
Should we select active users?
-Andrew Stephen and Yakov Bart (2018) "Social Media Marketing." Stukent.
-A Twitter study: The content shared by active users tends to be retransmitted more often.
Retransmission Likelihood
the probability that a person who receives information via social media or WOM will communicate to others (i.e. retweet or sharing)
Why is the retransmission likelihood for active users higher?
-content shared is perceived to be more current or fresh than someone who doesn't post very often
-no one wants to tell a story that has already been heard
-desire for novel information
The Strength of Weak Ties (Hansen 1999; Granovetter 1973)
-Strong ties don't necessarily lead to higher influence (weighted vs unweighted networks)
-Influences might be interdependent
--> friends will consider how many people already know the information
-Weak ties can sometimes be better because they might have
Telling Whether or Not Direction Matters
-Is the network symmetric?
-Look across diagonal line drawn in in Adjacency Matrix and see if the upper triangle matches the lower left triangle
--> Directed Networks should be asymmetric
Network Analysis Tools
-NodeXL (an Excel plugin) (recommended)
-Gephi
Serious Eats
multimodal network connecting people to blogs and/or forums
Serious Eats Matrix
Downloaded File converts the people to blogs data into blog to blog data
Insights gained from example data pull from serious eats matrix
-type of content commenters respond to
-type of content you might wish to emulate or differentiate from
-most active users (leads)
Insights from the Data Matrix
1) Is this a weighted or unweighted network?
2) Is this directed or undirected?
- Based on description
- Based on symmetry of matrix
Need to know how to interpret matrix and determine type of network